Tucked into the law is a requirement that businesses file tax forms called 1099s for every vendor that sells them more than $600 in goods. Business groups say it would create a paperwork nightmare for more than 40 million companies.

The procedural vote was defeated 46-52 and came on an amendment by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., that would have repealed the reporting provision. But it fell short of a required 60-vote majority. Lawmakers have been unable to agree on how to fill a $19 billion revenue gap from repealing the requirement.

The rule goes into effect in 2012.

Putting together the original vote for the health care bill in the first place and the vote to block this needed amendment, Republicans will have a message to carry into the races this fall. Remember this whenever you hear a Democrat talk about how they want to make things easier for small businesses.

3 comments:

As the Democrat Party has drifted steadily leftwards over the years, it appears that the number of its members with small business acumen has dwindled. This is certainly true with its leadership. Now that the Democrats are indistinguishable from garden variety European socialist parties, it's businessmen seemingly are exclusively the "crony capitalist" variety. Basically, they're not true capitalists at all. Rather, they're people content to run government sponsored and supported monopolies. Their mindset can be described as, "why have dozens of small businesses with competing and overlapping interests when one huge mega-company that supplies all of any particular commodity or service would be so much more efficient?"

Of course, the problem is that Dems and their fellow socialists never seem to learn that FREE markets will always perform more efficiently than government backed monopolies. As Thomas Sowell points out in his book "Basic Economics," huge companies that dominate specific markets (i.e., monopolies) have not remained dominate over time when markets are free. Competitors always find ways to deliver a better product, make it cheaper or provide better service. In this way, the dominate company looses market share and eventually ceases to dominate.

The Dems and Obama's economic policies either discourage or prohibit small competitors from challenging huge, politically favored crony-corporations. Thus, their policies cause waste, inefficiencies, stagnation and ultimately the destruction of wealth. But hey...everyone suffers equally. Well, that is everyone except party leaders.

My so called Senator and representative is Bill Nelson. Nelson introduced an amendment to increase the threshold for reporting from ^00 to $5000. That is still not a very good idea, but good ol' Bill then voted against cloture and prevented his amendment from coming to the floor.